FIFA has used our football as a cow -cow – and gives very little back FIFA

COlin Cowherd peered down from his studio agency high above the seats assigned to the guests on his FOX Sports Talk show. He had a simple question for the FIFA president Gianni Infantino. Really more of a requirement.

“Give me something about America that you really love,” Said Cowherd.

“Can I say citizen?” Infantino offered before he laughed a little too loudly. “I would certainly say citizen, but whatever I think, and this is not to flatter someone, but this is really the country of opportunities. There are so many opportunities for so many people here. That is why I still don’t understand why football has not become the no. 1 [sport] here.”

Citizens, sure. And chance, yes, that too. But Infantino’s answer aroused the tax -bearing pillar of his deep dedication to the American market: its economic power (for the time being).

At this point in his interview with Cowherd, Infantino had already pronounced his usual dampers about the grandeur of his steroid club World Cup. This was his last stop in a media blitz to even include the least spark of interest in the tournament, because the smell of despair becomes sharp. He had known that too FIFA “In principle, the income” doubles by holding its characteristic tournaments.

At the same time, Infantino argued that a lack of investments stops American football. “They have to listen to me, and then they become the NR competition in the world,” he said, apparently referring to Major League Soccer.

And in that we contain the tension between the growth of American domestic football on the one hand, and the interest of Americans in sport as a whole on the other.

Long past the years have been when MLS Felt as if it was staggered on the edge of insolvency, his future forever weak. Yet some teams, usually those who are owned by those who have been the competition for the longest time, still keep the costs low wherever they can. The newer investors generally want to spend more freely and dump cash in the gorge that separate the competition from the more lush circuits that could make it realistic. This internal disagreement has been a source of friction for years and will come to a head at a certain moment. It is fair to say that MLS could and would probably have to spend more.

But it is also true that the rest of football has treated the American market as a huge cash machine. In the coming years, the FIFA of Infantino will be at the forefront of this trend.

MLS not only competes with the other competitions of the world for TV viewers and the fact that it only comes in the air until hours after most European competitions have already been completed, there is no one but it is now the only competition that also has to contend with a matching alternative. The reason why the Club World Cup was planned here, and that the actual world cup will be here, as Infantino gives openly, is to reach in the bags of the American consumer. That is why the most tradable clubs in Europe go here on extensive tours for the season. That is why the Mexican national team plays a lot of its matches here. That is why Conmebol has held two Editions of Copa América here in a period of just eight years.

It is why an American promoter, relevant sports, FIFA and US Soccer has sued in antitrust soils and disputes a policy that contained domestic competition matches on the borders of the nation in question. Relevant achieved exactly what it intended when FIFA agreed to delete the policy To be rejected from the court case. It was not long, Spain’s La Liga, or the Serie A of Italy, or a number of other competitions could try to attract their competitions near your local MLS team.

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Soon MLS will no longer only be friends or the Club World Cup or that in the preseason, the colossi of the NBA and NFL but also competitive games in competitions that the American public already knows well. Name another domestic competition that is concerned about another competition that sets up a store in his backyard. Would Barcelona and Atlético Madrid Try to play a potential title-waying tilt In Germany or Argentina or Pakistan, as they tried in Miami in December? It’s doubtful.

MLS has to thank Infantino for this, on whose watch which protection existed for the competition have disappeared. The primary problem is not that MLS is under -financed. It is that for fans it is confronted with murderous competition.

The American market spends huge amounts of money on living football. Much of it just doesn’t go to MLS. These expenditures do not come from a bottomless pit of wealth, although FIFA continues to be planning to find out where the floor is towering ticket prices To the coming summer bonanzas. At a certain point, football fans will be tapped on what they want to spend to watch live games.

If you want Domestic American football to develop, you must set a kind of football protection – Although that cannot land so well at the moment. Or to do something, everything, to ensure that a growing competition does not spend his entire season on fighting all the invaders who are happy to be on his market, to be routinely arranging to put the interest and plunder the disposable income of the public.

But then FIFA is no longer busy opening new markets, as it once was. It is rather fully focused on generating the sport, regardless of the additional damage.